


On Being Loved

by PersianPenName



Series: Random GOmens One-Shot Scenes [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Crowley doesn't think he's able to be loved but it's sweet I promise, Gen, he's so soft, that way I can shuffle them about more easily and it's easier for folks to navigate, yes this used to be part of my 'disconnected scenes' work but I decided to disconnect them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:47:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26476687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PersianPenName/pseuds/PersianPenName
Summary: Crowley thinks on the nature of angels, and demons, and love both divine and not.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Random GOmens One-Shot Scenes [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1924819
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	On Being Loved

If he were a being capable of being loved, Crowley would describe himself as a lover, not a fighter. Before the War, before the Fall, he'd been one among many on the star construction crews under the Lightbringer, sent out far into the emptiness to paint with atoms and heat and the gentle tug of gravity. He'd sat in a couple meetings about the upcoming Garden project, heard about the amount of stress-testing the new creations were going to get, and fresh off an unexpected supernova he'd brought up a couple of concerns to the higher-ups.

Next thing you know, the first instances of a heavenly pink slip are being willed into existence, no severance thank you very much, and the whole thing turns into quite a bit more of a mess than he'd ever expected. When the _fighting_ and the _stabbing_ had started, he'd turned and ran, and as it so happened not being terribly keen on stabbing your old friends and co-workers was itself a stabworthy offense, so off he was tossed with the rest of the lot, an empty place in the core of him where Grace and Love had used to reside, to meet a pool of molten sulphur at terminal velocity.

He was fortunate, as the mass of newly-minted demons crawled their way onto the shores of their new domain and slowly tried to patch their broken forms back together with whatever bits of creation they could recall from Before, that his lack of _open wounds_ and generally _not being covered in blood_ resulted in a shape far less prone to the festering boils and sores some of the others had to put up with. It was a big reason why he'd been chosen for the first topside mission – that, and his utter and complete expendability.

It took some getting used to, not being an angel anymore, but after the first couple hundred years you got used to the cold, aching place with its utter lack of Divine Love, and you could just go about your day with hardly any crying at all. It helped to be angry instead, if you could manage it; the humans had showed him that trick, clever little bastards that they were. Eventually the anger died down, and the pain with it, or maybe he just learned to stop poking at it every five minutes like a missing tooth – either way he was surprised to realize, one humid evening in a too-warm tavern across a table with Heaven's brightest angel, that there wasn't anything he could remember from Upstairs that he would trade away even one minute of Aziraphale's company to get.

Bugger him, he was in love.

* * *

That night, he got spectacularly drunk in a rented room and tried to think it all through.

A demon was, at base, a bit of sentient essence. The only real change (occasional head-lizards aside) was that the being supposedly the most full and capable of love, who bestowed it on every creature great and small, from the worst human sinners to the most innocent mycorrhizal fungus, didn't think they were worth the bother. And yeah, it smarted, but it was what it was and no getting around it by this point. And if God Herself couldn't manage it, well. No chance then of a fluffy-haired angel pulling it off.

Well. That smarted too. Time for another bottle.

So yeah, maybe he was, as a demon, categorically incapable of being _loved_ , or _forgiven_ , but there were other things that were ~~nice~~ pleasant, and had the benefit of being possible. He could be liked. He could be desired. He could even be fonded – found? - whatever, folks could be fond of him. And he could like, and desire, and be fond right back, which had to count for something. And he could love _at_ things, even if they couldn't love him. Wasn't their fault, really, him being a demon. Couldn't be held against them in the slightest, not even worth thinking about. The liking alone was a hell of a feat, really, and only made that warm feeling in his chest stronger, to think he'd managed it; clever bastard of an angel. Liking was good, he could hang around the angel and soak up all the _like_ for days and days if he'd let him with no word of complaint – or not serious ones, anyway. No fun not complaining when he was so bloody adorable all riled up with a nice argument. The eyes might be a problem, but he'd had a couple ideas knocking around to hide them from humans, and if they worked for any mooning about he might theoretically do to nobody in particular, all the better.

He was in love. He, a demon. In bloody love. Chock fucking full of it, really. He lay down on the rickety bed he'd rented, empty bottle clutched to his chest, and smiled. He was in love.


End file.
